I Slouch, Therefore I Need a Shirt Like This

Here's a T-shirt your mom would love to see you in: one meant to make you "sit up straight!"

Called the Ergoskin, the device detects bad posture through sensors along the torso and prompts the wearer to correct it.

Someone who has been hunched over a computer for several minutes would begin to feel tiny pistons that "tap on the surface of the skin," says the Ergoskin's inventor, Talia Elena Radford Cryns, a graduate student of industrial design at Austria's University of Applied Arts Vienna. The biofeedback doesn't hurt and is imperceptible to others, according to Cryns. The device can be calibrated to a wearer's ideal posture as determined by a physiotherapist.

Repeated reminders to change position improve posture habits, which will eventually strengthen core muscles, Cryns says.

The Ergoskin won Austria's National Design Award for 2007 but is not yet commercially available.

-- Ranit Mishori